It was the kind of buzz mid-major basketball coaches dream about, the kind that has your name popping up as a potential candidate for jobs at underachieving major-college programs where the last guy hasn’t even been fired yet.

They use phrases like “up-and-comer” and “hot young coach” to describe you. Athletic directors from all over the country call just to chat.

Bobby Braswell once had that buzz.

In 2001, after he led Cal State Northridge to the NCAA Tournament and the second of back-to-back 20-win seasons, Braswell was among the hottest coaching commodities in the country.

His name was linked to jobs at Oregon, Oregon State, Colorado State, UNLV, Long Beach State and Fresno State. Instead, he signed a six-year contract extension with Northridge, his alma mater.

At the time, it was only mildly surprising. Northridge had announced a “three-phase” plan to add 2,000 seats to the 1,600-seat Matadome. Football was about to be eliminated, and all the statements from university president Jolene Kester and then-athletic director Dick Dull hinted that football’s loss would be men’s basketball’s gain.

Hindsight, though, hasn’t been as kind to his decision to stay.

Braswell is in the final year of that six-year contract. New athletic director Rick Mazzuto said that he intends to offer him an extension “in the next couple of weeks” but added, “that’s really only the start of the process.”

The Matadome still has 1,600 seats. Last year’s Blue Ribbon Commission report only “talked” about fundraising to expand it. And 2001 remains the Matadors’ only NCAA Tournament appearance.

To say it’s been a buzz-kill for Braswell’s coaching stock would be an understatement.

So you have to ask, did Bobby Braswell miss his window of opportunity?

“Oh yeah,” he said. “I still have colleagues come up to me, telling me, `You should’ve gotten out of here when you could.’

“But you know what? I still feel blessed every day I walk on this campus. It’s all relative. To me, being the head basketball coach at mid-major Cal State Northridge in the San Fernando Valley is the best thing in the world.

“Northridge was very good to me. When we won the Big Sky in 2001, they gave me a long contract that I was very appreciative for and showed me that they were committed to me being their basketball coach. I really appreciated that from the president and Dick Dull.”

Braswell says that because this is his home. He graduated from Northridge in 1985, got his first coaching gig down the street at Cleveland High in Reseda and left a high-profile assistant coaching position at Oregon to come back to the San Fernando Valley and take a crack at resurrecting the CSUN program in 1995.

He’s raised his three children – Jeffrey, Christopher and Kyndal – here and has been active in his local church, Shepherd of the Hills in Porter Ranch.

He also says that because his faith doesn’t allow him to look back and question past decisions.

“There’s never been a point where I look back and said, `Boy, I should’ve done this or I should’ve done that,”‘ Braswell said. “I do believe that, like you say, if you stay too long at a place you’ll be stuck there. But I always felt, and I still feel, that this is where God has me, and this is where I want to be. … I believe that when it’s my time, or if it’s my time to move on, God will provide a way for me to do that.”

Braswell points to the time when he decided to leave Cleveland High for an assistant coaching position at Long Beach State in 1989. He had passed on the 49ers’ offer in 1988 and immediately felt that he might have blown his one shot to coach at the DivisionI level.

“I remember telling my wife: `That was it. I’ll never get another chance to coach Division I again,”‘ he said. “And the following year, they called again. I’ve seen it happen in my life, and so I know it’s possible.”

Braswell may not want to question his decision to stay at Northridge, but plenty of others have.

Dull, who left the school last June and now lives in North Carolina, declined to comment on Braswell’s contract situation, citing a personal rule of not discussing the affairs of an institution once he’s left, but added that, “Bobby Braswell has the most difficult basketball coaching job in the conference.”

Cal State Fullerton coach Bob Burton is probably a close second in the toughest job debate.

“Bobby’s in the same boat as I am. We’re both playing in gymnasiums,” Burton said. “How many schools call their facilities gymnasiums anymore? It’s a really frustrating thing for us because it really impacts recruiting.

“And, to make money, we have to play guarantee games on the road. So we get our kids on the bus, drive over to UCLA and get our butts kicked, collect $50,000, then give the kids a sandwich on the ride home.

“But Bobby does a phenomenal job with what he’s got. Have you ever seen them where they don’t play hard? No. They don’t always play good. But his guys always play hard.”

Last year, Burton found himself in a similar situation to the one Braswell faced in 2001. Loyola Marymount offered him a contract worth more than $200,000, but he passed on it because Fullerton had a talented group of players returning, and the school rewarded him with a nearly $50,000 raise.

“In this business, you’ve got to move when you’re hot,” Burton said. “But I’m not really a move-around guy, and I don’t think (Braswell) is either.

“They gave us opportunities to coach. I was a JC guy and Bras was an assistant all over the place. They gave me the opportunity to do this, so I’m indebted to Fullerton forever, and I know that Bobby has poured his heart out for (Northridge).”

On the surface, not much has changed at Northridge since Braswell agreed to the six-year extension in 2001 that paid him $125,000 annually and offered incentives worth up to $170,000. The gym is still the same capacity and in roughly the same shape.

The biggest improvement to facilities since 2001 is the new office building that houses the athletic department. Before, the coaches operated out of portable trailers – the result of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.

Braswell said the biggest change to the program has been competing in the Big West Conference instead of the Big Sky Conference. Northridge entered the Big West in the 2001-02 season.

“After that (Big Sky) championship, we moved up to the Big West, and the advantages we used to have about recruiting from a location, we no longer had,” Braswell said. “Then it became an arms race: Who’s got the nicest facilities? Who’s got the biggest gym? Things change. But despite that, we’ve still been competitive.”

All of the other sevenschools in the Big West have basketball facilities that seat at least 3,000. Even Fullerton, whose gym is in a kinesiology department building similar to Northridge’s, expanded its seating capacity to 4,000 in the past few years.

When Utah State left the Big West two seasons ago, it meant that all the schools in the conference were located in California.

Braswell tries not to focus on the facilities deficit he has compared to the rest of the conference but admits that it does impact recruiting, which in turn has affected his record. Braswell was 85-62 in his first five seasons at Northridge. He’s 79-90 since.

“It’s an issue we have to deal with,” Braswell said. “You can’t hide the fact that in today’s times, that’s kind of the first thing kids want to see. … But if I worried about that, it would keep me from doing the what I need to do to win basketball games.”

Instead, he stresses personal relationships with potential recruits.

“You know the old saying: `It’s not how thick the carpet is, it’s the people who walk on it that’s important.’ That’s what we stress,” he said.

Braswell’s been walking on that thinning-carpet for 11seasons. The buzz from 2001 is now just a faint echo. His name doesn’t pop up in speculation about higher-profile jobs.

But junior shooting guard Jonathan Heard, for one, would like to see Braswell stay a little while longer.

“People know that if we listen to him and do what he says, he can lead us to the promised land just like he did in 2001,” Heard said. “He’s a great asset to this school. I don’t think anyone could fill his shoes.”